What the “Friends of the People” Are and How They Fight the Social-Democrats

(A Reply to Articles in Russkoye Bogatstvo Opposing the Marxists)

Let us now see how Mr. Mikhailovsky fights ...

BEFORE OCTOBER 22, 2004:
This webpage (03.htm) had pages 170–202;
currently it has pages 191–201.

Let us now see how Mr. Mikhailovsky fights the Social-Democrats. What
arguments does he level against their theoretical views, against their
political, socialist activity?

The theoretical views of the Marxists are set forth by the critic in the
following manner:

“The truth” (the Marxists are represented as declaring)
“is that in accordance with the immanent laws of historical
necessity Russia will develop her own capitalist production, with all its
inherent contradictions and the swallowing up of the small capitalists by
the large, and meanwhile the muzhik, divorced from the land, will turn
into a proletarian, unite, become socialised, and the trick is done, the
hat reappears, and it only remains to put the hat on the head of now happy
mankind.”

And so, if you please, the Marxists do not differ in any way from the
“friends of the people” in their conception of reality; they
differ only in their idea of the future: they do not deal at all, it
appears, with the present, but only with “prospects.” There
can be no doubt that this is Mr. Mikhailovsky’s idea; the Marxists, he
says, “are fully convinced that there is nothing utopian in their
forecasts of the future, and that everything has been weighed and measured
in accordance with the strict dictates of science”; finally and even more
explicitly: the Marxists “believe in, and profess, the immutability
of an abstract historical scheme.”

In a word, we have before us that most banal and vulgar accusation against
the Marxists long employed by all who have nothing substantial to bring
against their views. “The Marxists profess the immutability of an
abstract historical scheme!!”

No Marxist has ever argued anywhere that there “must be”
capitalism in Russia “because” there was capitalism in the
West, and so on. No Marxist has ever regarded Marx’s theory as some
universally compulsory philosophical scheme of history, as anything more
than an explanation of a particular social-economic formation. Only
Mr. Mikhailovsky, the subjective philosopher, has managed to display such
a lack of understanding of Marx as to attribute to him a universal
philosophical theory; and in reply to this, he received from Marx the
quite explicit explanation that he was knocking at the wrong door. No
Marxist has ever based his Social-Democratic views on anything but the
conformity of theory with reality and the history of the given, i.e., the
Russian, social and economic relations; and he could not have done so,
because this demand on theory was quite definitely
and clearly proclaimed and made the corner-stone of the whole doctrine by
the founder of “Marxism” himself—Marx.

Of course, Mr. Mikhailovsky may refute these statements as much as he
pleases, by arguing that he has heard “with his own ears” the
profession of an abstract historical scheme. But what does it matter to
us, Social-Democrats, or to anybody else, that Mr. Mikhailovsky has had
occasion to hear all sorts of absurd nonsense from people he has talked
to? Does it not merely show that he is very fortunate in the choice of the
people he talks to, and nothing more? It is very possible, of course, that
the witty interlocutors of the witty philosopher called themselves
Marxists, Social-Democrats, and so forth—but who does not know that
nowadays (as was noted long ago) every scoundrel likes to array himself in
“red”
garments?[1]
And if Mr. Mikhailovsky is so perspicacious
that he cannot distinguish these “mummers” from Marxists, or
if he has understood Marx so profoundly as not to have noticed this
criterion—most emphatically advanced by Marx—of the whole
doctrine (the formulation of “what is going on before our eyes”), it
only proves again that Mr. Mikhailovsky is not clever, and nothing else.

At any rate, since he undertook a polemic in the press against the
“Social-Democrats,” he should have had in mind the group of
socialists who have long borne that name and have borne it alone—so
that others cannot be confused with them—and who have their literary
representatives, Plekhanov and his
circle.[4] And had he done so—and that
obviously is what anybody with any decency should have done—and had
he even consulted the first Social-Democratic work, Plekhanovs Our
Differences, he would have found in its very first pages a
categorical declaration made by the author on behalf of all the members of
the circle:

“We in no case wish to cover our programme with the authority of a
great name” (i.e., the authority of Marx). Do you understand
Russian, Mr. Mikhailovsky? Do you understand the difference between
professing abstract
schemes and entirely disclaiming the authority of Marx when passing
judgement on Russian affairs?

Do you realise that you acted dishonestly by representing the first
opinion you happened to hear from your interlocutors as Marxist, and by
ignoring the published declaration made by a prominent member of
Social-Democracy on behalf of the whole group?

“I repeat,” Plekhanov says, “that the most consistent
Marxists may disagree in the appraisal of the present Russian situation”;
our doctrine is the “first attempt at applying this particular
scientific theory to the analysis of very complicated and entangled social
relations.”

It would seem difficult to speak more clearly: the Marxists unreservedly
borrow from Marx’s theory only its in valuable methods, without
which an elucidation of social relations is impossible, and, consequently,
they see the criterion of their judgement of these relations not in
abstract schemes and suchlike nonsense at all, but in its fidelity and
conformity to reality.

Perhaps you think that in making these statements the author actually had
something else in mind? But that is not so. The question he was dealing
with was—"must Russia pass through the capitalist phase of
development?” Hence, the question was not given a Marxist
formulation at all, but was in conformity with the subjective methods of
various native philosophers of ours, who see the criterion of this
“must” in the policy of the authorities, or in the activities
of “society,” or in the ideal of a society that
“corresponds to human nature,” and similar twaddle. So it is
fair to ask, how should a man who believes in abstract schemes have
answered such a question? Obviously, he would have spoken of the
incontrovertibility of the dialectical process, of the general
philosophical importance of Marx’s theory, of the inevitability of
every country passing through the phase of . . . and so on and so forth.

He left aside entirely the question of the “must,” as being an
idle one that could be of interest only to subjectivists, and dealt
exclusively with real social and economic
relations and their actual evolution. And that is why he gave no direct
answer to this wrongly formulated question, but instead replied:
“Russia has entered the capitalist path.”

And Mr. Mikhailovsky talks with the air of an expert about belief in
abstract historical schemes, about the immanent laws of necessity, and
similar incredible nonsense! And he calls this “a polemic against
the Social-Democrats”!!

If this is a polemicist, then I simply cannot understand what a windbag
is!

One must also observe in connection with Mr. Mikhailovsky’s argument
quoted above that he presents the views of the Social-Democrats as being:
“Russia will develop her own capitalist production.”
Evidently, in the opinion of this philosopher, Russia has not got
“her own” capitalist production. The author apparently shares
the opinion that Russian capitalism is confined to one and a half million
workers. We shall later on again meet with this childish idea of our
“friends of the people,” who class all the other forms of
exploitation of free labour under heaven knows what heading. “Russia
will develop her own capitalist production with all its inherent
contradictions, and meanwhile the muzhik, separated from the land, will
turn into a proletarian.” The farther in the wood, the more trees
there are! So there are no “inherent contradictions” in
Russia? Or, to put it plainly, there is no exploitation of the mass of the
people by a handful of capitalists, there is no ruin of the vast majority
of the population and no enrichment of a few? The muzhik has still to be
separated from the land? But what is the entire post-Reform history of
Russia, if not the wholesale expropriation of the peasantry, proceeding
with unparalleled intensity? One must possess great courage indeed to say
such things publicly. And Mr. Mikhailovsky possesses that courage:
“Marx dealt with a ready-made proletariat and a ready-made
capitalism, whereas we have still to create them.” Russia has still
to create a proletariat?! In Russia—the only country where such a
hopeless poverty of the masses and such shameless exploitation of the
working people can be found; which has been compared (and legitimately so)
to England as regards the condition of the poor; and where the starvation
of millions of people is a permanent thing existing side by side, for
instance,
with a steady increase in the export of grain—in Russia there is no
proletariat!!

I think Mr. Mikhailovsky deserves to have a monument erected to him in his
own lifetime for these classic
words![2]

We shall, incidentally, see later that it is a constant and most
consistent tactic of the “friends of the people” to shut their
eyes pharisaically to the intolerable condition of the working people in
Russia, to depict this condition as having merely been
“shaken,” so that only the efforts of “cultured
society” and the government are needed for everything to be put on
the right track. These knights think that if they shut their eyes to the
fact that the condition of the working masses is bad not because it has
been “shaken,” but because these masses are being shamelessly
robbed by a handful of exploiters, that if they bury their heads in the
sand like ostriches so as not to see these exploiters, the exploiters will
disappear. And when the Social-Democrats tell them that it is shameful
cowardice to fear to look reality in the face, when they take the fact of
exploitation as their starting-point and say that its only possible
explanation lies in the bourgeois organisation of Russian society, which
is splitting the mass of the people into a proletariat and a bourgeoisie,
and in the class character of the Russian state, which is nothing but the
organ of the rule of this bourgeoisie, and that therefore the only way
out lies in the class struggle of the proletariat against the
bourgeoisie—these “friends of the people” begin to howl
that the Social-Democrats want to dispossess the people of their land!!
that they want to destroy our peoples economic organisation!!

We now come to the most outrageous part of all this indecent, to say the
least, “polemic,” namely, Mr. Mikhailovsky’s
“criticism” (?) of the political activities of the
Social-Democrats. Everybody realises that the activities carried on among
the workers by socialists and agitators cannot be honestly discussed in
our legal press, and that the only thing a decent censored periodical can
do in this connection is to “maintain a tactful silence.”
Mr. Mikhailovsky has forgotten this very elementary rule, and has not
scrupled to use his monopoly contact with the reading public in order to
sling mud at the socialists.

However, means of combating this unscrupulous critic will be found even if
outside of legal publications.

“As far as I understand,” Mr. Mikhailovsky says with assumed
naïveté, “the Russian Marxists can be divided into three
categories: Marxist spectators (indifferent observers of the process),
passive Marxists (they only “allay the birth pangs”; they “are
not interested in the people on the land, and direct their attention and
hopes to those who are already separated from the means of production”),
and active Marxists (who bluntly insist on the further ruin of the
countryside).”

What is this?! Mr. Critic must surely know that the Russian Marxists are
socialists whose point of departure is the view that the reality of our
environment is capitalist society, and that there is only one way out of
it—the class struggle of the proletariat against the
bourgeoisie. How, then, and on what grounds, does he mix them up with some
sort of senseless vulgarity? What right (moral, of course) has he to
extend the term Marxists to people who obviously do not accept the most
elementary and fundamental tenets of Marxism, people who have never and
nowhere acted as a distinct group and have never and nowhere announced a
programme of their own?

Mr. Mikhailovsky has left himself a number of loopholes for justifying
such outrageous methods.

“Perhaps,” he jokes with the easy air of a society fop, these
are not real Marxists, but they consider and proclaim themselves as
such.” Where have they proclaimed it, and when? In the liberal and
radical salons of St. Petersburg? In private letters? Be it so. Well,
then, talk to them in your salons and in your correspondence! But you come
out publicly and in the press against people who (under the banner
of Marxism) have never come out publicly anywhere. And you have the
effrontery to claim that you are polemising against
“Social-Democrats,” although you know that this name is borne
only by one group of revolutionary socialists, and that nobody
else should be confused with
them![3]

Mr. Mikhailovsky twists and turns like a schoolboy caught red-handed: I am
not the least to blame here—he tries to make the reader
believe—I heard it with my own ears and saw it with my own
eyes.” Excellent! We are quite willing to believe that there is
nobody in your field of vision but vulgarians and scoundrels. But what
have we, Social-Democrats, to do with it? Who does not know that “at
the present time, when” not only socialist activity, but any social
activity that is at all independent and honest evokes political
persecution—for every one actually working under some
banner—be it
Narodovolism,[5] Marxism, or even, let us say,
constitutionalism—there are several score phrase-mongers who under
cover of that name conceal their liberal cowardice, and, in addition,
perhaps, several downright rascals who are feathering their own nests? Is
it not obvious that only the meanest vulgarity could make any of these
trends responsible for the fact that its banner is being soiled (privately
and secretly, at that) by all sorts of riffraff? Mr. Mikhailovsky’s whole
argument is one chain of distortions, misrepresentations, and
manipulations. We saw above that he completely distorted the
“truths” which are the Social-Democrats starting-point,
presenting them
in a way in which no Marxist at any time or place has, or could have,
presented them. And if he had set forth the actual Social-Democratic
conception of Russian reality, he could not but have seen that one can
“conform” to these views in only one way, namely, by
helping to develop the class consciousness of the proletariat, by
organising and uniting it for the political struggle against the present
regime. He has, however, one other trick up his sleeve. With an air of
injured innocence he pharisaically lifts up his eyes to heaven and
unctuously declares: “I am very glad to hear that. But I cannot
understand what you are protesting against” (that is exactly what he
says in Russkoye Bogatstvo, No. 2). “Read my comment on
passive Marxists more attentively and you will see that I say: from the
ethical standpoint, no objection can be made.”

This, of course, is nothing but a rehash of his former wretched
subterfuges.

Tell us, please, how one would characterise the conduct of a person who
declared that he was criticising social revolutionary Narodism (at a time
when no other type of Narodism had yet appeared—I take such a
period), and who proceeded to say approximately the following:

“The Narodniks, as far as I understand, are divided in to three
categories: the consistent Narodniks, who completely accept the ideas of
the muzhik and, in exact accordance with his desires, make a general
principle of the birch and wife-beating and generally further the
abominable policy of the government of the knout and the club, which, you
know, has been called a peoples policy; then, shall we say, the cowardly
Narodniks, who are not interested in the opinions of the muzhik, and are
only striving to transplant to Russia an alien revolutionary movement by
means of associations and suchlike—against which, however, no
objection can be made from the ethical standpoint, unless it be the
slipperiness of the path, which may easily convert a cowardly Narodnik
into a consistent or courageous one; and, lastly, the courageous
Narodniks, who carry out to the full the peoples ideals of the
enterprising muzhik, and accordingly settle on the land in order to live
as kulaks in good earnest.” All decent people, of course, would
characterise this as vile and vulgar scoffing. And if, furthermore, the
person
who said such things could not be rebutted by the Narodniks in the same
press; if, moreover, the ideas of these Narodniks had hitherto been
expounded only illegally, so that many people had no exact idea of what
they were and might easily believe whatever they were told about the
Narodniks—then whoever would agree that such a person is. . . .

But perhaps Mr. Mikhailovsky himself has not yet quite forgotten the word
that fits here.

But enough! Many similar insinuations by Mr. Mikhailovsky still remain,
but I know of no job more fatiguing, more thankless and more disgusting
than to have to wade through this filth, to collect insinuations scattered
here and there, to compare them and to search for at least one serious
objection.

Notes

[1]All this is said on the assumption that Mr. Mikhailovsky has
indeed heard professions of abstract historical schemes and has
not invented anything. But I consider it absolutely imperative
in this connection to make the reservation that I give this only
for what it is worth.
—Lenin

[2]But perhaps here, too, Mr. Mikhailovsky may try to wriggle out
by declaring that he had no intention of saying that there was
no proletariat at all in Russia, but only that there was no
capitalist proletariat? Is that so? Then why did you not say so?
The whole question is one of whether the Russian
proletariat is a prolelariat characteristic of the bourgeois or
of some other organisation of social economy. Who is to blame if
in the course of two whole articles you did not utter a
word about this, the only serious and important
question, but preferred instead to talk all sorts of nonsense
and reach the craziest conclusions?
—Lenin

[3]I shall dwell on at least one factual reference which
occurs in Mr. Mikhailovsky’s article. Anybody who has read that
article will have to admit that he includes even Mr. Skvortsov
(author of The Economic Causes of Starvation) among the
“Marxists.” But, as a matter of fact, this gentleman
does not call himself a Marxist, and the most elementary
acquaintance with the works of the Social-Democrats is
sufficient for anybody to see that from their standpoint he is
nothing but a most vulgar bourgeois. What sort of Marxist is he
if he does not understand that the social environment for which
he projects his progressive schemes is a bourgeois environment,
and that therefore all “agricultural improvements”
actually to be observed even in peasant farming are bourgeois
progress, which improves the position of a minority but
proletarianises the masses! What sort of Marxist is he if he
does not understand that the state to which he addresses his
projects is a class state, capable only of supporting the
bourgeoisie and oppressing the proletariat!
—Lenin

[4]Reference is made to the Emancipation of Labour group, the first
Russian Marxist group, founded by G. V. Plekhanov in Geneva in
1883. Apart from Plekhanov, P. B. Axelrod, L. G. Deutsch,
V. I. Zasulich, and V. N. Ignatov belonged to the group.

The Emancipation of Labour group played a great part in
disseminating Marxism in Russia. The group translated into
Russian, published abroad and distributed in Russia the works of
the founders of Marxism: Manifesto of the Communist
Party by Marx and Engels; Wage-Labour and Capital
by Marx; Socialism: Utopian and Scientific by Engels,
etc. Plekhanov and his group dealt a severe blow to Narodism. In
1883 and 1885 Plekhanov wrote two drafts of a programme for
Russian Social-Democrats, which were published by the
Emancipation of Labour group. This was an important step forward
in preparing the ground for, and in the establishment of, a
Social-Democratic Party in Russia. An important part in
spreading Marxist views in Russia was played by Plekhanovs
essays: Socialism and the Political Struggle (1883),
Our Differences (1885) and The Development of the
Monist View of History (1895). The Emancipation of Labour
group, however, committed serious errors; they clung to remnants
of the views of the Narodniks, underestimated the revolutionary
capacity of the peasantry, and over estimated the role of the
liberal bourgeoisie. These errors were the embryo of the future
Menshevik views held by Plekhanov and other members of the
group. The Emancipation of Labour group had no practical ties
with the working-class movement. V. I. Lenin pointed out that
the Emancipation of Labour group “only theoretically
founded the Social-Democracy and took the first step in the
direction of the working-class movement.” (The
Ideological Struggle in the Working-Class Movement. See
present edition, Vol. 20.)

At the Second Congress of the R.S.D.L.P. held in August 1903 the
Emancipation of Labour group announced that it had ceased its
activity as a group.

[5]Narodovolism, the tenets of the
Narodovoltsi—members of the secret Narodnik
terrorist political organisation Narodnaya Volya
(Peoples Will ) which arose in August 1879, following
the split in the secret society Zemlya i Volya (Land and
Liberty). The Narodnaya Volya was headed by an Executive
Committee which included A. I. Zhelyabov, A. D. Mikhailov,
M. F. Frolenko, N. A. Morozov, V. N. Figner, S. L. Perovskaya,
A. A. Kvyatkovsky. The immediate object of the Narodnaya Volya
was the overthrow of the tsarist autocracy, while their
programme provided for the organisation of a “permanent
popular representative body” elected on the basis of
universal suffrage, the proclamation of democratic liberties,
the land to be given to the people; and the elaboration of
measures for factories to pass into the hands of the
workers. The Narodovoltsi were unable, however, to find the road
to the masses of the people and took to political conspiracy and
individual terror. The terroristic struggle of the Narodovoltsi
was not supported by a mass revolutionary movement, and enabled
the government to crush the organisation by resorting to fierce
persecution, death sentences and provocation.

After 1881 the Narodnaya Volya fell to pieces. Repeated attempts
to revive it during the 1880s ended in failure—for
example, the terrorist group organised in 1886, headed by
A. I. Ulyanov (V. I. Lenin’s brother) and P. Y. Shevyryov,
which shared these traditions. After an unsuccessful attempt to
assassinate Alexander III, the group was exposed, and its active
members executed.

While he criticised the erroneous, utopian programme of the
Narodovoltsi, Lenin expressed great respect for the selfless
struggle waged by its members against tsarism. In 1899, in the
“Protest by Russian Social-Democrats,” he pointed
out that “the representatives of the old Narodnaya Volya
managed to play an enormous role in the history of Russia
despite the fact that only narrow social strata supported the
few heroes, and despite the fact that it was by no means a
revolutionary theory that served as the banner of the
movement.” (“A Protest by Russian Social-Democrats.”
See present edition, Vol. 4.)